Stain Protection

Stain protection is an important part of the Carpet Cleaning Process. What it does is exactly what it says, it protects the carpet from permanent staining.

What does everyone dread when they get a new carpet? The first stain or mark. How long before it happens? Usually it’s just days! If we are lucky, it’s something minor and we get it out straight away. However, you could be like a recent client in Thanet. She came home tired from work and sat down with a bottle of wine to relax for the evening and sunk her feet into her plush, new, four day old, gold coloured wool twist carpet. “Ah, this is the life!” You know the feeling, and the only way to enjoy red wine fully, is in a large red wine glass. You know the sort, the ones that can hold half a bottle. Trouble is, you know what happens when you are tired. You drop off to sleep. And that wine that you were so enjoying? It’s amazing how far it can travel. Yes this poor client did just that! Did she have stain protection? No. Did she wish she had? Yes. Did she wish she was on my Maintenance Plan? Yes. What happens when you have an accident like this? We panic. Then everything comes out from under the kitchen sink in an attempt to remove the stain. In this case, the attempt by the householder to remove the stain resulted in a permanent bright orange stain. I could do nothing to help her as the stain remover she used was not suitable for use on a wool carpet and it had permanently altered the dye in the carpet and produced a new unwanted colour. Result? The carpet needing replacing.

I don’t tell this story to scare, this is just how it can be. Fortunately for most of us we are far luckier. What this story illustrates though is, Stain Protection removes the need for luck. We can make our own luck by investing in Stain Protection.

Can Stain Protection stop all stains? Well, stains are complex creatures. Take a coffee stain for example and let’s break it down. Was it hot, cold or warm? Was it dropped from walking height, coffee table height, or on the floor and kicked over? Was it De-caff or regular? Did it have sugar in it? Did it have milk or cream? What difference does it make? You would be surprised. Each one of these factors can affect whether the stain will come out. In this instance, if it were hot coffee, with cream and sugar, and you had tripped bringing it into the room. The velocity with which the stain hit the carpet, coupled with the starches in sugar and the fats in the milk, make this a very difficult and complex stain to remove. Not necessarily impossible, but difficult. If you had Stain Protection, the likelihood is we could get it out. Without it, I could not make any guarantees. Some stains because of their temperature or their velocity will break through the protector, but even so, we still have more chance of removing it than without.
To illustrate; one of my instructors was called out to clean up two red wine stains on the same carpet at different points in the room. The first one came out easily, it looked more like a splash and some drips. The second one was a longer stain more in the pattern of a trip type of stain, the same wine though. This one was much more difficult to remove, in fact it would not come out completely, there was still a shadow left. When he enquired further, the first stain was a glass of wine thrown in someones face and it dripped to the floor. The second stain was the remains of the bottle fired across the room at a fleeing partner. The difference? Just the velocity of the stain.

Stain Protection is a good investment. It coats the fibres with a protective layer that prevents stains from penetrating and binding itself to them. It also provides you with a window of opportunity to get the stain up before it dries. A good tip is to use clean white kitchen paper, and blot up the stain until you can get no more out.

Many Stain Protectors contain Teflon as this is a non stick surface. Contrary to popular belief, Stain Protection does not last for five years or more. In the early days of Stain Protection what happened was, you were sold a protector treatment and it was underwritten by an Insurance Company for Five Years. This gave the impression that it lasted for five years. Not so. Stain Protection gets walked off at a rate of approximately 30% per year. This in theory gives it a life of three years. However, you must apply the law of diminishing returns. At the end of year 1, the protector is only at 70% strength, so it is not fully operative. At the end of year 2, the protector is down to a mere 40% effective. To put that into perspective, if you bought a new car that was capable of 100 mph (where permitted), but by year two, it would only do 40mph maximum, you wouldn’t think it was doing it’s job properly so you would take it back and get it fixed or replace it. The same is true of stain protection it needs re-application. That is why our Maintenance Plan is such a good idea, it’s all included in the package.